William Butler Yeats

O Do Not Love Too Long

O Do Not Love Too Long - meaning Summary

Love Risks Growing Outdated

Yeats’s short lyric warns that staying in a single love too long can render both lover and feeling obsolete. The speaker recalls a youthful, indistinguishable union where both minds were one, then notes a sudden change in the beloved. He counsels against loving for too long to avoid becoming "out of fashion" and dated, comparing prolonged affection to an old song that has lost its place.

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Sweetheart, do not love too long: I loved long and long, And grew to be out of fashion Like an old song. All through the years of our youth Neither could have known Their own thought from the other's, We were so much at one. But O, in a minute she changed - O do not love too long, Or you will grow out of fashion Like an old song.

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